TASK #37: GET IT WRITE
“The proper definition of a man is an animal that writes letters”. Lewis Carroll
I got a note from a reader. It said, in part: “you are full of shit…” and later, “my ass can write better than you…” I thought: that’s stupid, but it also makes sense in a weird way.
But this guy did have a suggestion for a column. And while I’ve heard it before, maybe because he said it to me like I was a complete dipshit, it resonated it with me. What he said was, “you should write a letter to yourself–yourself 20 years ago. I thought, okay–that’s not half bad. So I did.
What would I say to the younger Joe Doe?
|
But what would I say to the younger Joe Doe? At first I thought, hell, I’ll tell myself what stock to invest in and I’ll get rich. GOOGLE! APPLE! I’d tell myself who won the World Series, not to mention the World Cup, the Kentucky Derby, the Ohio State Michigan game (it was the Buckeyes!), and I’d bet on all that and make a mint; I’d have my younger self write a letter to Bill Clinton and tell him not to screw around with the interns; and I tell me to go to see Saving Private Ryan in a theatre, which I didn’t do back then, and instead I watched it on VHS a few months later, and it just wasn’t as impactful.
But then I took that letter and ripped it up. And I wrote another one. I told my younger self to go see my mother and hug her. Call up my brother and tell him that it’s ok that he’s gay and fuck anyone who told him that it wasn’t. Go visit my dad and hold him because he dies that year. Look up Mr. Mitchell, the odd duck English professor who made me love Chaucer and tell him that he was a great teacher. Go find Cynthia P., who you dumped so savagely that year, and do it again, only this time with some empathy.
TASK
Write a letter to your younger self. And tomorrow, do something that’s positive, so you won’t have to write to yourself about it in another 20 years.
Photo courtesy of the author